Yankee Getting Closer To Finding Source Of Radiation Leak

(Host)
Vermont Yankee says it may be getting closer to finding the source of a
radiation leak at the plant.

A
test well has turned up relatively high levels of tritium, a radioactive
isotope. Plant officials say the finding is good news - since it could pinpoint
where the leak is coming from.

VPR's
John Dillon has more.

(Hear sounds of well drilling)

(Dillon) That's the sound of equipment that's drilling
a test well outside the main reactor building at the Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont.

This
is one of about a dozen wells Yankee technicians have sunk in order to test
ground water flowing from the plant toward the nearby Connecticut River.

Plant
spokesman Rob Williams says one of the wells showed tritium levels at about 775,000
picocurries per liter, about 10 times higher than previously reported.

(Williams) "As they make these findings
in terms of the concentrations of tritium, it really directs them to the
source. And we got some very good news with the recently installed well just
east of the plant's condensate water storage tank and also some underground
piping that appears to be closer to the source."

(Dillon)
But James Moore with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group says the
discovery of higher radiation levels is not necessarily a positive development.

(Moore) "There's no
good news about much, much higher levels of radioactive contamination in our
ground water. Entergy's version of good news is like their version of the
truth. It's very, very different from what Vermonters understand those words to
mean."

(Dillon)
For more than a year ago, Entergy officials told the state that the plant did
not have underground pipes that could leak. Plant technicians are now looking
for those leaking pipes.